[1] Born in Batumi, Georgia, Mchedelov joined the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904, first as Stanislavsky's assistant, later to co-direct and direct the MAT productions.

He loved young people and they reciprocated, he gave us more time and effort than other teachers and we admired him for that," the actor Vsevolod Verbitsky wrote in his memoirs.

[2] As in 1916 the school closed for financial reasons, it was Mchedelov who started to collect the money for the new project which finally materialized as the MAT Second Studio which opened with the premiere of Zinaida Gippius's The Green Ring to a resounding public acclaim.

His another big success at the Second Studio was the renewed production of Maurice Maeterlinck's Blue Bird in 1921.

A zealous follower of Stanislavski's ideas, Mchedelov in the early 1920s was engaged in most of the theatre's experimental work.